Los Doggies

While it doesn’t have quite the cult following of a Wegmans or a Trader Joes, the humble chain of Stewart’s Shops inspires a kind of religious devotion in upstaters. If Wegmans is Scientology, then Stewart’s is Jonestown, but obviously with its own brand of Stewart’s Kool-Aid. There must be something in the ice cream that gets people to prostrate before the burgundy swoosh. It can’t be just those sexy burgundy uniforms. And like all holy places, the Stewy’s dining area invites all manner of crazy folk, including audiologist creeps like this author.

Over the weekend, I did some field recording at the local shop. Drag over the noteheads to listen and click on the score to slow it down.

That right there is one of the best gas pump melodies this side of New York. An arpeggio of an E-flat major Sixth chord, although a little out of tune. A flurry of them plays behind the counter every time someone pumps gas. Most gas pump melodies are rather tedious and simplistic, but as usual, Stewy’s puts their own branding on it. The Major Sixth chord is a also popular chord used for train chimes.

Hey Stewy’s, you want Los Doggies to write you a jingle using your dingle? We promise not to give you the Ween/Pizza Hut treatment. This’ll be elegant, like a Janis Joplin car commercial.

How many cliches can be strung together in a song before it crosses the fine line of originality into copyright infringement? Los Doggies has the answer with a new Christmas song called “Mad for Christmas”.

I don’t always tune in every year, but I’ve always loved Christmas music from the ’50s and ’60s of both the 19th and 20th centuries. It is a time for glockenspiel-dominated pop music. Y’know, like the Boss?

The ideal Christmas tune would feature heavy glock with a jingle bell swing. Meanwhile the other instrumentation would be light, so light it could hardly be heard above the three-part harmonies. Of course, it would be sung in the sacred Christmas key of D Major.

And it wouldn’t be afraid to wish the listener a “Merry Christmas”, or even try to make a big political thing out of it. (Ultimately, we went with a wistful “Happy Christmas,” whispered like George Michael at the end of the song.)

“Mad for Christmas” sounds like a dozen other classic carols. The wide chorus melody is almost like “Here Comes Santa Clause” and the song follows a similar chord progression. Listen below and try to spot some other holiday motifs.

A very merry Christmas to you!

Thank you to Robb of American Pancake for his review of Ear Op. Click here for the review. Robb’s blog is filled with in-depth album reviews and musical musings like improvisational songwriting. Fans of this here site will love the content.

Ear Op is our first studio effort with local producer, Kevin McMahon at Marcata, recorded in his old barnyard studio in Gardiner, NY, with the reverb silo out back. This is a kinda personal album for me about my childhood ear-tube operations with a more minimalist live-band sound. Since Kevin takes this approach in his production style, I knew he’d be a perfect choice and spoke to him about the project vision a year before we recorded anything. We both wanted to capture the raw sloppy indie-energy with a nod to ’70s pompy prog-rock—the result is Ear Op, four songs specifically written for our live-studio barnyard band. After the ear-tube operation, my ears never quite recovered and have been showered with nerve noise ever since, so Kevin’s ears made sure it sounded golden. Enjoy!

Above photo is the Stormo brothers after the ear ops, taken from the second time, when “I watched you sleep as you watched me die.”

“Ear ops” plural probably would’ve been a better title for the song “Ear Op” but I didn’t think of it.

At over ten minutes, “Ear Op” is our longest song yet, but that was an accident. I meant to write a three-minute pop song until the prog muse took over. As program music, “Ear Op” mimics the three stages of a real ear operation. It starts with the conscious section in a happy major key before general anesthesia kicks in, followed by the much longer unconscious section in minor, and a spiraling instrumental leads back to the conscious end section. There is also a key change up three steps to evoke an awakening, a successful surgery, and a more expansive ear.